States Target Sexual Abuse By Educators

It's
the type of publicity people never want to see about their schools. But
on a single day this month, parents and educators in five different
states woke up to the following headlines:

"Former Educator Sentenced for Sex Crimes"

"Teacher Convicted of Having Sex With Two Students"

"Abuse Nets Ex-Teacher a Year in Jail"

"Gilbert Teacher Charged With Sexual Misconduct With
Student"

"Lawsuit Says School Officials Failed To Protect Young Girl
From Teacher"

Those accounts of separate incidents came from the
Associated Press on April 12. On any day of the year, though, it's long
been easy to find similar reports of sexual misconduct by school
employees. In 1998, a three-part

special report
showed that such cases conformed to recognizable patterns and were
happening in all sorts of schools in all kinds of communities.

But now, a new Education Week survey suggests, at least some
state policymakers are starting to pay more attention.

Whether it's criminalizing sex between educators and older
teenagers, strengthening background checks of new teachers, or trying
to prevent molesters from slipping away to new jobs, the survey shows
that states are slowly taking aim at a problem that continues to give
America's schools a black eye.

More than half the states now have sexual-assault laws covering
educators who abuse their positions of trust by having sex with
students, the survey found. Though school employees in many states can
legally have sex with students as young as 16, more states are amending
criminal codes to clarify that such behavior is out of bounds.

In 42 states, applicants for state certification are required to
undergo criminal-background screenings that involve fingerprint checks
through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state police,
according to the survey. While experts say many shortcomings remain in
state background-check policies, that number is far greater than the
handful of states that were performing checks 15 years ago.

Some states have also taken steps to curb the problem known as
"passing the trash": the practice of allowing employees suspected of
wrongdoing to leave quietly for new jobs, often to abuse more students.
In the Education Week survey completed this year, 17 states
reported that they required local school officials to inform the state
if educators leave their jobs amid suspicions of sexual misconduct.

The same number of states said they had laws shielding school
officials from defamation suits based on job references given for
current or former employees. Such laws grow out of a fear that
officials will face lawsuits if they are candid to prospective
employers about questionable conduct by former staff members.

Like many other educators, Barbara Underwood never used to notice
all the headlines about schoolhouse sexual misconduct. But that changed
after three employees in the suburban Indianapolis school district
where she is the superintendent were arrested within a three-month
period in 2001 on charges of having sex with students.

One is in prison, another married the student involved, and a third
shot himself to death the day he was arrested.

"I've paid more attention to [the problem] since we went through our
experiences," Ms. Underwood of the 12,500- student Carmel Clay district
said in a recent interview. "I started noticing it's happening
everywhere."

Priests and Teachers

Sex between students and school employees has taken place for
generations. Yet many people inside and outside the profession have
tended to view such cases as aberrations rather than a pervasive
problem demanding policymakers' attention.

Contributing to this view has been a moral ambivalence in some
quarters about consensual sex between educators and older high school
students, which some regard as more the province of private conscience,
or at least of individual communities, than of laws and
regulations.

Still, recognition has gradually grown that educators' sexual
misconduct with students—and the betrayal of trust it
represents—takes a tremendous toll on the individuals directly
affected, and on their schools and communities. ("At One California School, a 'Never-
Ending Nightmare,'" Dec. 16, 1998.)

In response, state legislatures and departments of education have
moved to tighten their laws and regulations. In part because the issue
is generally not perceived as a national one, states have typically
taken a go-it-alone approach.

The result is great unevenness among states in a range of policy
areas, including whether consensual sex between educators and older
teenagers is a crime, and under what circumstances.

That situation has frustrated many advocates for victims. Why, they
want to know, has the problem of predatory educators received far less
public attention than the issue of Roman Catholic clergymen who
sexually abuse children?

"Everybody is all up in arms about the priests, but there's no
difference from what priests and teachers have been doing to kids for
decades," said Terri L. Miller, the president of the advocacy network
Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation, or
SESAME.

"Where is the outrage?" she continued. "Why aren't people protesting
in Washington, demanding safe education? Why aren't people in an
uproar?"

Others who have long been involved in the issue believe that
American education is gradually becoming more honest about a problem it
has commonly swept under the rug.

One is Bart Zabin, the chairman of the professional-practices
committee of the National Association of State Directors of Teacher
Education and Certification, which operates a national clearinghouse on
educators whose licenses have been rejected or invalidated.

"There's lots of work still to be done," said Mr. Zabin, the
principal investigator for the office of school personnel review and
accountability in the New York state education department.

"But I think it's extremely positive to see that we continue to
trudge forward in terms of raising the standard of security," he added.
"Things are much better than they used to be, and we're still moving in
the right direction."

Positions of Trust

One of the factors that influence whether a state is perceived to
need laws targeting sexual misconduct by educators is its age of
consent: the point at which young people can legally consent to sex
with adults.

Thirty-two states set that age at 16; Colorado makes it 15; a
half-dozen states set it at 17; and 11 states set the age of consent at
18, the Education Week survey found.

In part to help protect students above the age of consent, 27 states
either make it a crime, or increase criminal penalties, for educators
to abuse their positions of trust or authority by having sex with
students, the survey found.

Still, educators in 14 states typically cannot be prosecuted for
having "consensual" sex with students who are 16 or older, the survey
found. By contrast, a less formal survey in 1998, Education Week
found that it was legal in 20 states for school employees to have sex
with students who were 16 and above.

One state that has tightened its laws to protect students above the
age of consent is North Carolina. In 1999, the state made it a felony
for school employees to have sex with students in the schools where
they work.

"There were stories of teachers at middle schools who waited till
their previous students were 16, and then engaged in a relationship
with them," recalled Leanne E. Winner, the director of governmental
relations for the North Carolina School Boards Association, which
helped draft the legislation. "There was no way you could pursue them
criminally. All you could do is dismiss them and try to revoke their
license."

Despite the increased prevalence of laws aimed at preventing
educators from abusing their positions of trust, those 27 state laws
vary widely, the survey found.

In some cases, the statutes specifically mention teachers,
administrators, coaches, or other school employees. Other laws define
authority figures more generally.

Some of the laws increase criminal penalties for sex that would
already be illegal, such as those involving students below the age of
consent. Other statutes outlaw activity that would otherwise be
legal.

States also differ on the ages of students covered by their
position-of-trust laws.

In South Carolina and Iowa, for example, those laws only apply to
students up to 15. Five states— Connecticut, Georgia, North
Carolina, Ohio, and Wyoming—protect students regardless of their
ages. But in Wyoming—as in Iowa, New Hampshire, and New
Mexico—prosecutors must show that school employees actually used
their positions to coerce students to submit to sex.

Impact Being Felt

Connecticut is especially stringent because school staff members are
barred from having sex with students who attend any school in their
districts, not just the schools where the employees work.

The scope of the law became an issue last year in a case involving a
young teacher in Manchester, Conn., who began having sex with one of
her students when the girl was 16.

Before the teacher pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine months
in prison, her lawyer, Salvatore Bonanno, challenged the statute
outlawing staff-student sex as unconstitutionally broad. He argued that
the bill would make a felon out of a 19-year-old school maintenance
worker, for example, who was engaged to a senior at a high school
across town.

"I don't think it's just, I really don't," said Mr. Bonanno, who is
based in Hartford, the state capital. "There's an entire panoply of
potential criminal offenders who fall under the statute. It's limited
only by your imagination."

While the question in that case became moot with his client's guilty
plea, Mr. Bonanno said he is interested in challenging the statute in
the future.

Despite qualms raised about broad bans on sex between teachers and
students, such laws are having an impact.

In the three years after the 1999 North Carolina law took effect,
for instance, 71 educators were charged, including some whose cases are
still pending, and 37 were convicted, state officials said. In Ohio,
which has had its current ban in place since 1994, four male educators
from the same suburban high school outside Cincinnati have pleaded
guilty since December to charges of having sex with female students who
were above 16— Ohio's age of consent.

"Were it not for that statute, it would not have been a crime,"
noted Daniel J. Breyer, the head of the criminal division in the
district attorney's office in Clermont County, Ohio.

Ohio's law is seen by some advocates as a model because it forbids
sex between school employees and students of any age, rather than only
those under 18. Ms. Miller, of SESAME, has been calling for a federal
law based on Ohio's statute. Failing that, the group backs widespread
replication of the law in other states.

"We would like to get all states on board with that type of
legislation," Ms. Miller said.

Some Ohio educators see holes, though, in the Buckeye State's
efforts to protect children. For example, the Ohio Department of
Education has been pushing for a bill that would require schools to
report cases of sexual misconduct by certified educators to the
department. The Education Week survey found that 17 states have
such requirements.

"We are supposed to be notified by the courts, by the prosecutor's
office, but we just don't feel that's enough," said Marilyn Braatz, a
department spokeswoman.

Battles Persist

Advocates often find they must fight for years before they muster
enough support for legislation targeting sexual abuse by educators.
That certainly has been the case for Carol S. Petzold, a member of the
Maryland House of Delegates. Ms. Petzold, a Democrat, saw her
position-of- trust bill die in committee this month for the third year
in a row.

Her legislation aimed to close what she views as a loophole in the
state's sex- crimes laws: If teachers have sex outside of school with
students who are above the age of consent—which is 16 in Maryland
for intercourse and 14 for other intimate acts—then they cannot
be charged with a felony.

"This is why charges are either not brought or dismissed in cases
like that of the middle school teacher who had weekly sexual contact
with his 14-year-old student off campus," Delegate Petzold told members
of the House judiciary committee during a hearing in March on her bill,
which would have made such acts criminal felonies. "It appears that we
condone the sexual exploitation of older teens."

Prosecutors became concerned about the loophole following a case in
the mid-1990s involving a teacher who was having sex with a student
above the age of consent, recalled Bob Dean, the deputy district
attorney in Prince George's County, Md. Mr. Dean, who handled that
case, then successfully requested an opinion from the state's attorney
general that made clear the shortcomings in the state's existing
statutes.

"It's a pretty callous society that would sweep something like that
under the rug," Mr. Dean said. "You're ruining somebody's childhood."
In what has become a perennial debate in Maine, lawmakers are
considering several bills that would repeal or scale back the state's
law requiring fingerprinting and criminal-background checks of all
school employees.

Spurred to oppose the 1999 law by a group of passionate
critics—some of whom have resigned rather than submit to
fingerprinting—the Maine Education Association is again pushing
to repeal the law.

"Not all our members are as worried about this issue, but a
significant number of our members are, and they just view it as an
invasion of privacy," said Rob Walker, the president of the
20,000-member National Education Association affiliate.

Mr. Walker predicted that the best he could probably hope for this
year is a bill to limit fingerprinting to new hires. Three years ago,
opponents won legislative passage of such a measure, but then-Gov.
Angus King, an Independent, vetoed the bill. The following year, he
vetoed a bill that would have repealed the fingerprinting requirement
altogether.

The debate in Maine is occurring without statistics on what its
background checks have revealed, because state law prohibits the
department of education from divulging data on the screenings. The
state education commissioner favors revising the law to allow the
agency to release aggregate figures, without employees' names—an
idea the teachers' union opposes.

Genie Wheelwright is a Spanish teacher who left her job at a Maine
high school after 14 years rather than get fingerprinted. She argues
that money used on fingerprinting would be better spent hiring more
personnel to investigate child-abuse cases; educating students on "how
to protect themselves from potentially abusive situations"; training
staff members to recognize signs of abuse; helping mistreated children
"to step forward and speak up"; and ending "the 'pass the trash'
problem in hiring."

"Administrators need to be sure that references give complete and
candid appraisals of job applicants," Ms. Wheelwright told Maine
legislators at a March 26 hearing.

'Very Clear Message'

In Indiana, a provision that would give immunity to administrators
who provide just that type of reference was part of a broader measure
that supporters were scrambling to pass last week as the state's
legislative session neared its finale. The bill was inspired in part by
the spate of abuse cases two years ago in the Carmel Clay school
district, where Ms. Underwood is superintendent.

Supported by the state education department and the state's largest
teachers' union, the bill would clarify that all school system
employees, not just instructional personnel, are prohibited from having
sex with students under 18. The age of consent is 16 in Indiana.

The bill would expand the scope of prohibited conduct to acts in
addition to intercourse and would require prosecutors to notify both
the state superintendent and local districts when licensed educators
were convicted of certain crimes, mainly those involving drugs or
sexual exploitation of minors.

Similar legislation was vetoed last year by Gov. Frank L. O'Bannon,
mainly because of provisions related to government liability for
punitive damages arising from lawsuits against public employees. Those
issues have been addressed, and the Democratic governor backs this
year's legislation. Versions of the bill passed both chambers of the
legislature earlier this spring, but a final measure was pending late
last week.

"It's going to send a very clear message to teachers and
administrators that sexual relations between teachers and students will
not be tolerated," said Terry Spradlin, the legislative liaison for the
Indiana education department.

He added that the new reporting requirements would make sure that
state officials found out about educator misconduct. "We sometimes hear
about these instances second and third hand, so we're sometimes slow to
react with license revocation," he said.

To Indiana state Rep. Gerald R. Torr, a Republican whose district
includes the Carmel Clay schools, the bill passed by the House and
Senate is a step in the right direction, but does not go far
enough.

He pushed to require that districts be notified if employees were
arrested for certain offenses, not just convicted. He said that change
would have helped school leaders in Carmel Clay respond to the cases as
they erupted in his hometown.

In one of those cases, a 55-year-old former high school soccer coach
is in prison for engaging in sex with a 15-year-old boy on his
team.

Another involves a 42-year-old 5th grade teacher and high school
basketball coach who married a girl on his team right after receiving
probation for having sex with her since she was 16. In the third case,
a 30- year-old math teacher never stood trial on sex charges involving
a 16-year-old girl in his class because he committed suicide after
being charged.

"In two of these three instances, [school officials] found out about
the situation when the news media called for comment, which is
atrocious," Rep. Torr said.

Superintendent Underwood said she's not sure whether any of the
provisions of this year's legislation would have prevented the cases
that so traumatized her community. But that is beside the point, she
said, if those cases can help prevent similar conduct in the
future.

"These things are absolutely devastating to children," she said. "We
never want this to happen to a child again."

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.